Mar. 4, 2026
Dead data walking
California courts keep citing the "roughly 1 in 200" armed-robbery-death statistic, originally from a single 1980 Supreme Court footnote, showing how judges can turn a shaky number into enduring legal lore.
4th Appellate District, Division 2
Michael J. Raphael
Associate Justice
4th District Court of Appeal
Yale Law School
Shutterstock
This article is about a statistic.
It is this: "only roughly 1 in 200" armed robberies result
in death. People v. Banks, 61 Cal.4th 788, 811 (2015).
That statistic c...
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